MOUNTAIN VIEW -- Silicon Valley's first pure-tech IPO in 2014 brought in millions more than expected Thursday, as Coupons.com convinced investors it is worth more than $1 billion.

The discounts website planned to sell 10 million shares at a price ranging from $12 to $14, but after meeting with potential institutional investors, the company sold an additional 500,000 shares at a price of $16, according to IPO tracking service Renaissance Capital. The company, founded during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, brought in $168 million at that price, with an initial valuation approaching $1.2 billion.

Coupons.com took three years to launch its first digital coupon, in 2001, and is now attempting to move to mobile devices in a fight with the mailbox circulars and newspaper inserts that have dominated thrifty customers' lives for decades. The company generates revenues when customers use the coupons, through deals with the manufacturers or stores, and also sells digital advertising on its site and third-party sites where its coupons appear.

Twelve years into the effort, with founder Steven Boal still at the helm as president and CEO, Coupons.com was involved in 1.3 billion consumer transactions in 2013. Revenues jumped in 2013 with that performance, gaining from $112.1 million in 2012 to $167.9 million; while still unprofitable, the company's losses shrank last year as well, from a net loss of $59.2 million in 2012 to $11.2 million.

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Silicon Valley's IPO market has been hot so far in 2014, but only in one sector: Biotechnology. Health care and biotech companies have been going public at historic rates at the beginning of 2014, with 17 such companies arriving on the public markets in the first two months of the year after a total of 35 last year.

Coupons.com, however, is the first non-biotech IPO from the Bay Area this year, though many others remain in the pipeline, with South San Francisco biotech company Achaogen and San Francisco health-care software company Castlight Health expected to sell their first shares next week, according to Renaissance.

Coupons.com is selling all the shares in the IPO, with the proceeds targeted to general corporate purposes. CEO Boal will own 9.3 percent of the company after the offering, with investors Passport Ventures (19.5 percent) and T. Rowe Price (10.1 percent) also owning substantial stakes.

Coupons.com is expected to begin trading Friday morning on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol COUP.